Industrial plant becomes a new home for stray dogs in Çankırı

ÇANKIRI - Anatolia News Agency

Leman Özgüler, 47, one of the partners of the casting plant in the Organized Industrial Zone , first got a dog 20 years ago. Now she provides a home for 81 stray dogs in the shelter at the plant. AA photos

An industrial plant owner in the central Anatolian province of Çankırı with a love for canines has turned 1,000 square meters of the plant’s land into a dog shelter.

Leman Özgüler, 47, one of the partners of the casting plant in the Organized Industrial Zone (OSB), first got a dog 20 years ago. Now she provides a home for 81 stray dogs in the shelter on the land of the plant.

She said that she began feeding a shelter dog in her house in Ankara 20 years ago. After it died at the age of 10, she later adopted one more dog and began taking care of it in the plant in Ankara.

“With the dogs from the region, the number of our dogs increased to five or six. We moved the plant to Çankırı’s Korgun district in 2009 and continued feeding dogs there. Villagers, seeing that we were feeding dogs, brought us the dogs that they could not take care of. Then this number increased to 81.

Besides these, 30-40 of our dogs died of disease. If they had all lived, we would have more dogs at the moment,” she said.

‘We have a special communication’

Özgüler said that they were taking care of dogs on their own, continuing: “We buy broken pasta from a pasta shop in OSB. We mix it with bread and feed the dogs in a meal. We also give them dried food.

We have veterinary friends and a small pharmacy to treat them when they are sick. The dogs got their rabies vaccine last year with the help of the District Governor’s Office. We continue to take care of them in this way. If God gives us strength and our plant survives, we will keep these dogs.”

She said that they had created a special communication with the dogs, adding, “I had cats before that but love for a dog is very different. My dialogue with the dogs is different, too. I will almost begin to bark like a dog. There is love between us and we have power to keep them. When my dogs see me, they show their love to me.”

Özgüler also said that they built a pet cemetery for the dogs that died in order not to damage the environment. “We dig a hole so as bacteria does not grow in the garbage. When they die, we bury them there. We have a small-sized cemetery for the dogs,” she concluded.